The Pittsburgh Public Schools system has removed or replaced a dozen drinking water fountains and 117 faucets that tested as having higher levels of lead in the water. The remedial action has been completed in advance of students returning to schools next week.

The district took water samples from nearly 2,400 faucets and fountains at about 70 school facilities. Three percent of those 4,700 samples produced lead readings at or above 20 parts per billion, exceeding the level at which the EPA recommends to take action.

"What parents can know is that we've taken the appropriate steps, to addressing of those issues," Ronald Joseph, chief operations officer for Pittsburgh Public Schools, told Pittsburgh's Action News 4. "(We did it) by making sure that we have a higher standard of drinking water for the testing, and also by the action we took to place filtered drinking water into the buildings."

The EPA and CDC say there's "no known safe level of lead in a child's blood. Lead is harmful to health, especially for children."

The district won't reveal which schools had the now-removed fountains and faucets until the full report is ready for parents in the next week or two.

Parents of students who will be returning to city classrooms soon are awaiting more details.

"I feel that the lead levels that they're looking at now, those are very important levels. They need to be very specific on determining those, especially when dealing with our public schools in Pittsburgh," Marcella Carrington, a parent of two city school students, told Pittsburgh's Action News 4.

Meanwhile, the school district installed 300 new filtered water fountains and bottle filling stations, putting three to six in every city school, regardless of whether they tested higher for lead.

"It ensures there will be a high quality of drinking water at those fountains," Joseph said.

The federal and state governments do no not require school districts to test for the presence of lead in their drinking water. The district undertook the testing and the installation of new fountain and faucets voluntarily, at a combined cost of at least $1.5 million.